Taken for Dead (Kate Maguire) (17 page)

‘Their motivation appears to be anger that our present-day politicians and businessmen have shown themselves to be so greedy and corrupt, and a determination to punish them financially for the economic crash. However, they’re not above lining their own pockets with the proceeds of that punishment. I suppose you might say that we’re dealing with a combination of Brian Boru and Robin Hood.’

Thank you, Bryan, thought Katie, as Bryan Molloy smiled smugly at his own turn of phrase. I love you, too. You have just made me appear to the media like an amateurish woman who bungled a highly sensitive operation, leading to the tragic and avoidable death of one of our own, while at the same time giving them the impression that you, the great Bryan Molloy, are close to having all of these cases efficiently wrapped up.

It didn’t help that Bryan Molloy was still highly regarded for the way in which he had stamped out the worst of the rampant gang warfare in Limerick. That was one of the reasons he had been appointed to take over Chief Superintendent O’Driscoll’s job here in Cork, if only on an interim basis. Katie, on the other hand, had failed in her efforts to bring Michael Gerrety to justice on thirty-seven charges of profiting from prostitution. The
Examiner
’s headline had been ‘Gerrety, 37 – Garda, 0’.

***

As they went back up in the lift to their offices, Katie said, ‘Well, Bryan, you haven’t made my life any easier, have you?’

‘Is that what I’m here for?’ he retorted. He wasn’t looking at her directly, but he was staring at her in the mirror in the back of the lift. ‘I thought I was here to make sure you did your job properly. You’re a detective superintendent, Katie, and it would be very gratifying if you did some actual detective superintending once in a while, instead of preening yourself. Perhaps if you spent more time going after criminals and less time nosing around in my bank accounts. You won’t find anything of interest there, I can assure you of that.’

‘Bryan, you shouldn’t have mentioned the High Kings of Erin. For all we know they’re nothing but spoofers. And we have no hard evidence at all to tell us who killed Micky Crounan. It might have been the High Kings of Erin, it might not.’

‘Then it’s up to you to prove it, girl, one way or another, wouldn’t you say?’

He pushed his way out of the lift in front of Katie, which was something that Dermot O’Driscoll would never have done. Katie stepped out into the corridor after him and said, ‘I’ll prove it, Bryan, you can be sure of that. And it will give me great satisfaction to show you you’re wrong.’

Bryan Molloy let out a bark of a laugh and marched off towards his office, his clipboard tucked under his right arm, his left arm swinging as if he were on parade at Dublin Castle.

Katie watched him go, and at that moment she badly missed Dermot O’Driscoll – and John, too, or anybody who could understand how isolated she felt, and how guilty, and how helpless. She could confide in Kyna Ni Nuallán, she knew that, but she had decided to keep her relationship with Kyna on a strictly formal footing, superintendent and sergeant. God alone knew where their mutual affection would lead if she allowed it, and her career was in more than enough trouble already.

Her iPhone rang. Detective Horgan was calling her from Mayfield.

‘Sorry, ma’am, I haven’t been able to contact the manager of Snap Printing yet. I went to his house but there’s nobody home.’

‘Leave it till the morning then. A few hours isn’t going to make much difference.’

She stood alone in the corridor for a few moments, her eyes closed as if she were praying, but in fact she was only thinking how tired she felt. Then she went along to her own office to collect her raincoat.

It rained hard all the way home to Cobh and even when her windscreen wipers were flapping at full speed Katie could hardly see the road ahead of her. It seemed to be raining even harder when she turned into her driveway, climbed out of the car and hurried to the front porch with her head down and collar turned up.

There was no question of taking Barney out for his evening walk – not unless the rain eased off, anyway. She let him out into the garden where he sat in the shelter of the patio awning, looking mournful. She sometimes wondered if he missed John as much as she did.

She went through to the spare bedroom that she still called the nursery, lifted her nickel-plated .38 Smith & Wesson revolver out of the flat TJS holster on her belt and placed both gun and holster in the top drawer of the chest that had once held Seamus’s baby clothes, his Babygros and little blue cardigans.

Back in the living room, she poured herself a glass of Smirnoff Black Label and switched on the TV. There was news and sport on the first three channels and
Mrs Brown’s Boys
on the fourth, so she pressed the remote to mute the sound and went through to the kitchen. She didn’t feel like listening to news, and she didn’t feel like laughing, either. She opened the freezer and stared at the shelves, trying to decide if she felt like a Marks & Spencer chicken casserole or salmon fishcakes or a pizza.

She was still making up her mind when the doorbell chimed. Barney heard it, too, because he barked and started scratching at the kitchen door. Katie said, ‘Hold on a minute, Barns!’ and went to the front door to see who it was.

Standing in the porch outside, wearing only a black cable-knit sweater and light grey trousers spotted with raindrops, was David Kane. She could immediately tell by his expression that he was distressed.

‘David?’ she said. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘I’m sorry,’ he told her. ‘This is a terrible imposition, I know, but I was wondering if I could stay here in your house for maybe an hour or two. It’s Sorcha. She’s having one of her episodes and she’s pretty much thrown me out. I thought it was better to leave straight away than try to fight it out with her.’

‘All right, come on in,’ said Katie. ‘Is Sorcha okay? She doesn’t need any medical attention, does she?’

‘No, she’s all right, really. She just needs some time to herself to calm down. Whatever I do or say, it only sets her off. If I try and be nice to her, she accuses me of lying, but if I try to be strict with her, that makes her really violent. That’s when she starts hitting me and breaking things. The best alternative is for me to get out of there. I don’t want to end up hurting her, for the love of God.’

‘Do you want me to go round and talk to her?’ Katie asked him.

‘No, no. That would only make her even more aggressive. She’d accuse you of interfering and all sorts. It’s best to leave her when she’s like this. Her medication will start to kick in soon, and then she’ll simply go to sleep and wake up the next morning without the faintest memory of what she was like the night before.’

Katie led him through into the living room.
Mrs Brown’s Boys
was still on, so she switched the television off. ‘Would you like a drink?’ she asked him. ‘I have whiskey, but I also have some Satz in the fridge if you’d rather.’

‘A whiskey, please. I need it after the evening I’ve had, I can tell you.’

She lifted up a bottle from the drinks table, but it was nearly empty, so she picked up another one. ‘At the moment I have only Paddy’s, I’m afraid. The last time my dad came over he must have finished off all of my Green Spot.’

‘Paddy’s is fine,’ said David. She poured him a large glass and he sat down on the leather couch. ‘
Slainte
,’ he said. ‘You’re a life-saver.’

‘Isn’t Sorcha getting any better?’ asked Katie, sitting down beside him.

‘Her doctor seems to think so, but her doctor isn’t there when she’s throwing one of her fits. I made up my mind a long time ago that it’s just something I’ll have to live with.’

Katie heard Barney mewling and scratching at the back door again, so she excused herself and went into the kitchen to let him in. He trotted inside, soaking wet, and shook himself violently in the middle of the kitchen floor.

‘
Barns
! You could have waited for me to fetch your towel!’

She turned round and found David standing right behind her. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I hope you didn’t get showered.’

His face remained serious. ‘I just wanted to tell you how grateful I am that you let me in.’

‘Well, of course, don’t be silly. It’s lashing outside and you don’t even have an umbrella.’

Katie rubbed Barney down with his frayed old bath towel and gave the kitchen floor a quick squeaky going-over with her sponge mop. Then she led David back into the living room and they both sat down on the couch again.

‘I don’t know,’ said David. ‘Sometimes I feel like there’s no way out of it, and it’s never going to end.’

‘Well, you and me both,’ Katie told him.

‘What? You’ve had a bad day, too?’

‘Oh, you don’t want to hear all of my problems. Besides, I shouldn’t really discuss them with anybody. It’s mostly to do with an ongoing case I’m dealing with.’

David took another swallow of whiskey and then set down his glass. ‘If it’ll make you feel better to talk about it, go ahead. I won’t tell a soul.’ He paused, and then he said, ‘I’m a doctor, remember.’

‘Oh, yes, but you’re only a dog and a cat and a budgerigar doctor! It can’t be too difficult to maintain patient confidentiality when your patients can only tell you things in woofs and miaows and chirrups.’

David smiled, but his smile faded almost immediately. ‘It’s not what the animals tell me, Katie, it’s their owners. Just because I’m wearing a white coat they think that they can unburden their souls. I had a woman from Coolamber come in the other day who told me that she hated dogs,
despised
them – couldn’t stand the smell and the slobber and the clearing up after them. But taking her spaniel for a walk every evening gave her an excuse to visit her lover three streets away. The spaniel didn’t get a whole lot of exercise, but she did.’

Katie thought for a moment, then she said, ‘Well – this case that’s giving me so much grief – you’ll see it mentioned on the news tonight anyway, and in the papers tomorrow, so I don’t suppose there’s any harm in your knowing about it.’

She told him about Micky Crounan’s kidnapping, and the ransom handover that had gone so disastrously wrong. She told him about the media conference, too, and how Bryan Molloy had damned her with faint praise in front of the press. She knew that she shouldn’t discuss internal Garda affairs with civilians, but she felt so demoralized that she needed to talk to somebody about it. Six months ago she could have told her father, because he had been a Garda inspector for eleven years and would have understood, but ever since the tragic death of the woman he had been intending to marry he had closed himself off and spent most of his days staring out of his window at the rain, and the toing and froing of the Passage West ferry.

‘David – you mustn’t breathe a word of this to a single soul,’ she said. ‘I could really be goosed if you do.’

David smiled at her and laid his hand on top of hers. ‘You don’t have to worry, Katie. Heaven knows I have enough difficulties myself with Sorcha, and I shouldn’t be telling anybody how mad she can behave sometimes. Mostly, yes, I can cope with it, as I’m sure you can cope with your friend Bryan Molloy. But, come on, it’s a great relief to be able to share your problems with somebody who’s prepared to listen, and who understands what you’re going through, even if there’s nothing else they can do to help – not in a practical way, anyhow.’

Unexpectedly, Katie found that David’s words had made her feel very emotional, and her throat tightened. Part of the reason was that he reminded her so much physically of John – that dark, lean look, like some martyred medieval saint. Yet he also possessed an animal magnetism that John had never had. She almost felt that he understood everything that was upsetting her so much, that he was capable of showing her how to get her strength back, and her courage, although she was more than aware that she might have to pay a price for it.

She felt tears prickling in her eyes, so she said, ‘You’ll excuse me for a moment. I need to give Barney his supper.’

She got up and went into the kitchen – not only to open a can of Brandy’s Chunks in Gravy for Barney, but also to take a few deep breaths and stare at her reflection in the window over the sink. The glass was jet-black and bejewelled with raindrops and there she was, a pale ghost looking back at herself from the yard outside. Barney was making a clattering noise pushing his bowl around the floor, but Katie could hear David talking on his mobile phone.

‘Yes, that’s grand. No problem at all. I’ll see you tomorrow so.’ ‘Yes, me too.’ ‘Of course I do. I just can’t say it at the moment.’ ‘Because I can’t.’

She came back into the living room just as he was pushing his phone back into his trouser pocket. ‘Everything all right?’ she asked him. ‘Would you like another drink?’

‘Yes, go on, then, thank you,’ he said, holding up his glass.

‘You’re a vet,’ she said, ‘so tell me something I’ve always wondered about. Do our pets really love us? Or do you think they only show us affection because we feed them and take care of them and make a fuss of them?’

David shook his head. ‘Oh, I believe they genuinely love us, and in the same way that we humans love each other.’

‘But how can you know that?’

‘Because sometimes we humans hurt each other badly, don’t we? But we still come back for more. In the same way you can whip a horse but it will still remain faithful to you, or you can thrash the living daylights out of a dog and it will still be devoted. Men and women can cause each other terrible pain sometimes, but that doesn’t stop them from wanting and needing each other. After all, what else is there?’

They carried on talking for well over an hour. David was an attentive listener, and for the first time in her life Katie found herself describing to a stranger how she had only joined An Garda Síochána because none of her sisters were interested in becoming police officers and she hadn’t wanted to let her father down. Midway through her training at Templemore she had almost quit because of the bullying and sexual harassment, even from other women trainees, and she had nearly resigned again when she had been assigned to Crosshaven Garda station, in Coastguard Cottages, Crosshaven, where there was hardly any crime except for bicycles having their wheels pinched or fishing nets being vandalized or drunken yachtsmen punching each other in the car park of Cronin’s pub.